


León de mi Corazón

by clockheartedcrocodile



Series: León de mi Corazón [1]
Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Demonic Possession, First Time Blow Jobs, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Intimacy, M/M, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Road Trips, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-05 12:53:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12794991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Not for the first time, Marcus wishes he were a poet. Tomas drinks up beautiful words like wine. Marcus thinks of his own clumsy attempt at a letter, begun and re-begun until the whole thing had been consigned to the rubbish bin. It was laughable.Besides, Tomas and Jessica wrote letters because they could not have each other.“You have me,” he says, quiet enough that Tomas won’t wake.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xJuniperx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJuniperx/gifts).



> Dedicated respectfully to xJuniperx, may the Lord protect and keep you and so on and so on.
> 
> I can be found on Tumblr at @clockheartedcrocodile.

Tomas Ortega watches a flock of crows cross the sunset and wonders if it’s an omen.

Night’s coming in and a chilly wind comes with it, tugging at Tomas’ coat and numbing his fingers on the gas pump. He hates gas stations at night. Always empty yet garishly lit, always open to the elements and freezing cold even in summer. Nothing to do but stand quietly and listen to the dead leaves skittering across the asphalt. The convenience store looks like every other convenience store in America. The night is as long as the highway.

Tomas shoves his free hand into his pocket to keep it warm. A dog barks furiously in the distance and he shrinks back into his coat. Tomas wonders when exactly he’d learned to hate things.

He feels a shadow fall across him; someone standing just behind his left shoulder. A moment later an arm falls heavy around his shoulders, and the tension that had tightened Tomas’ limbs leaves him in one quick rush of breath.

“The lady in there looked at me like I was gonna rob the place,” says Marcus Keane. “You do the shopping next time.”

He’s got a styrofoam coffee cup in one gloved hand and a plastic bag swinging from the crook of his arm. He smells like leather and a six hour car ride. Tomas tries and fails to hide his smile. “I look no better,” he says, gesturing to his split lip and bruised eye. A deep cut across his right eyebrow is only just beginning to heal.

“Sure, but when I walk into a shop looking like I’ve been in a scrap, people think I’m a criminal,” Marcus says wryly. “When you do, they’re overwhelmed with Christian charity. Collar or no collar.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Tomas laughs. “Were you recognized?”

“No,” says Marcus, blowing the steam off his coffee. “Once again, the hat is doing its job.”

The wind twirls dead leaves around their knees, and Tomas shivers, his body tensing against the cold. Marcus opens his coat and puts his arm around Tomas’ shoulders again. “Denver is still seven hours away,” he continues. “We’ll have a chance to sleep before we get to work, God willing.”

“Speaking of sleep,” says Tomas, taking Marcus’ coffee and sipping from it.

Marcus stares at him incredulously. “That was mine,” he says.

“Actually,” says Tomas, just as the nozzle jumps in his hands with a satisfying _ch-chunk,_ “I am more in need of the energy. I will be driving the rest of the way.”

“I like doing the driving,” says Marcus. _It makes me feel useful,_ hangs unspoken in the air.

“It’s been twenty hours since you last slept,” says Tomas. He had counted. “I read once that going without sleep for more than seventeen hours makes you almost drunk. You’re not at your best. So, you are going to sleep, and I’m going to drive.”

Tomas slips out from under Marcus’ coat to rip the receipt from the pump. The loss of the warmth bites him harder than he thought it would. “I hope you bought real food this time,” he adds.

Marcus lets out a disgruntled huff and shakes open the bag to inspect its contents. “There’s real food in here, yeah. Enough plastic-wrapped sandwiches, crisp packets, and bottled water to last us a few days. I don’t want us going anywhere in Denver except to and from the hotel.”

Tomas sighs. He looks around the parking lot one more time before climbing into the truck; the interior feels even colder than the outside air.

Marcus climbs up into shotgun and shuts the door behind him. “You alright?” He asks gently. “We can get better food in Denver. Maybe the hotel will have something.”

“It’s not that,” says Tomas, turning the key in the ignition. The engine roars to life and the headlights snap on, piercing the darkness with white light. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“Can’t imagine why,” says Marcus, as Tomas pulls away from the pump. “What’s troubling you this time?”

“Death,” Tomas says matter-of-factly. He smiles to try and make the admission seem friendlier. “We spend every day chasing it.”

_“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”_

_“I will fear no evil, for you are with me,”_ Tomas finishes. They exchange warm looks. “It’s not fear, exactly,” he clarifies. “I am just . . . thinking. Do you think about death?”

“Bit of a loaded question, innit?” Marcus says. He leans down to adjust his seat, his mouth twisting uncomfortably, and Tomas worries he’s set something off. Marcus is full of hidden nerves, waiting to be touched.

“Yes,” Tomas says slowly, “but I’m curious to know the answer.”

“I think about Paradise quite a lot, but that’s hardly surprising, is it?” Marcus leans back in his chair. He watches Tomas while Tomas watches the road. “I hope you don’t think about death often, Paradise or otherwise,” he says finally. “Not with the way you act.”

“And how is that, exactly?”

“Fucking self-destructive.”

“I’m not self-destructive,” Tomas mutters. “I only mean that the valley of the shadow of death seems not to be a place, but a time, and wherever we go we are always just in time for it. We have been running behind the sun, or ahead of it. Never seeing a sunrise.”

It was true, in a way. They followed the murders, the western wind, the dogs. They drove across the country with a bag full of newspaper clippings and a truck bed full of chains and Bibles. They were beginning to forget that sometimes dogs barked for joy, and not all birds were crows.

“You’ve got the soul of a poet, Tomas,” Marcus says, not unkindly. He tugs off his gloves one finger at a time and slaps them lightly against Tomas’ chest. “Here. Put these on.”

Marcus has a way of speaking which brooks no argument, even when he’s not being serious, so Tomas pulls them on one after the other and is privately grateful for it. The lining is still warm from Marcus’ hands.

“Wow,” says Tomas. “You may never get these back.”

Marcus tilts his hat forward to cover his face; he’s settling in for a nap, eyes crumpled closed and breathing already slowing. “Good,” he says. “You need them more.”

***

When Marcus finally drops off to sleep, Tomas turns the radio down for him. Leonard Cohen cuts off halfway through “Closing Time” with a staticky growl.

Sleep without dreams is a gift from God in their line of work, but seeing Marcus sleeping in the truck always makes something clench in Tomas’ heart. He sleeps wedged against the window with his head bobbing with the motion of the truck, his skinny limbs folded up around him. He has the look of a man who has slept in many cars.

Tomas would rather he never had to sleep in a car again. Many times he’s woken up in the middle of the night, heart still pounding from the latest nightmare, only to look over and see Marcus sleeping peacefully in the next bed. The sight of him snuffling softly from under the blankets is an immediate balm to Tomas’ discomfort, like a lit candle in a dark window.

Tomas still glances at him when he drives, because he has so few opportunities to just look. Marcus has a crooked mouth and eyes the color of forget-me-nots in winter. It is not a beautiful face, but it is one that Tomas has made beautiful by association. It makes him think of rough laughter and soft leather.

Tomas had first seen him in a vision, and the sight had changed him. That man, the unnamed priest in his dreams, had burned with a divine power that made Tomas wake up slick with sweat and shivering all over. His presence had filled up the room, filled up Tomas’ mind itself. Dreams were by their very nature immaterial, yet Tomas had touched things. He had picked up scattered teeth in his hands, and felt the slickness of the blood. He wonders sometimes if he could’ve reached out and touched Marcus then, if Marcus would have somehow felt it eighteen months before, and found comfort in his touch.

The man Tomas had met at St. Aquinas had looked twenty pounds lighter and more than a little older. He had pushed him against the wall and told him he was being deceived.

It had been overwhelming to dream of that man and then to see him, to know that everything Tomas had believed in and vowed to uphold was true. It was the closest Tomas had ever come to touching God, and God, in that moment, had touched him back.

***

They arrive in Denver at half past two in the morning. Marcus groans when Tomas nudges him awake, his eyes stinging and half-dead from exhaustion. He drags himself out of the truck and finds that Tomas has parked them on the third floor of a parking garage that stinks of piss and tailpipe exhaust. The elevator, when it finally arrives, opens in a series of halting lurches.

They ride down in exhausted, companionable silence.

The nearest cheap hotel is two blocks away, down a lonely sidewalk lit intermittently by day-glo orange street lamps. Marcus can hear distant cars, and the repetitive thumps of muffled club music. He sends a silent prayer of thanks up to Heaven that the walk is short and straight; he doubts he’d remember a convoluted route in the morning.

Their room has washed out walls and a buzzing, flickering quality to the light. Tomas’ bed is by the window and Marcus’ by the wall. They pray together before they sleep, as they do every night. They sit on edges of their beds with their knees just touching, Tomas’ hands clasped together and Marcus’ hands folded over them.

 _“He who dwells in the secret places of the Lord abides under the shadow of His wings,”_ Marcus murmurs. _“He is my refuge, and my fortress. He shall cover you with His wings, and by His wings you shall be comforted.”_

 _“The Lord says, because he has set his love upon Me, I will deliver him,”_ Tomas continues. _“I will set him above all others, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me and I will answer him. I will be with him in times of trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and I will show him My salvation.”_

“Amen,” they say together. Marcus lets out a long, low exhale. “Get some sleep,” he says. “We’ll be up early tomorrow.”

They sleep like dead men, and Marcus dreams of Heaven. He sees God Himself wreathed in divine light, His arms outstretched to greet him. “My son,” He tells him, “all is forgiven,” and Marcus runs to Him like a child, to be picked up and spun about and praised.

It is a good dream, and Marcus forgets it as soon as he wakes.

***

They always share the bathroom in the morning, Marcus showering while Tomas shaves, then vice versa. Marcus is introducing Tomas to northern soul, and they leave the tape deck playing in the other room until it stops and Marcus has to flip the tape over. Tomas is used to talking over the music.

Working together has been a blessing and a curse for both of them. Twice the exorcists means twice the weak spots for demons to exploit, and exploit them they do. During the early days of Tomas’ apprenticeship, it had been the easiest thing in the world to pit them against one another.

Marcus had seem Tomas dead or violated too many times to count. He had watched him tear open his own arms until the skin sloughed off in strips, and seen his face crack and split with knots of festering boils. It was always the skin they ruined first. Somewhere in the annals of Marcus’ mind, the demons had found that Tomas had the most beautiful skin Marcus had ever seen.

Sometimes the devils fixated on Marcus, and these were the ones that tended to make spectacles of themselves. They loved to wag their tongues about how unknowable they were, how untamable, in the face of the once-feared Marcus Keane. They bubbled and spat and cursed and convulsed. When they were split from their hosts, the bodies were usually near death.

Not all demons were like this.

Some of them fixated on Father Tomas, finding him to be the more immediate threat, and these were usually the manipulative ones. These devils would make him see visions or speak in tongues, and they made their hosts do humiliating things to disturb him. Sometimes they would lie as if dead for hours on end, waiting for Tomas to draw close, and when he inevitably did they would bite him with mossy green teeth and whisper in his ear with the voice of Jessica or Olivia or Marcus himself.

This could go on for days or more.

Sometimes it takes weeks to throw those demons screaming back to Hell. Other times, a few hours will do. Very occasionally, it only takes long enough for Marcus to cup their face in his hands, whispering with all the sincerity of the devout, _“Fallen angel, you are forgiven. Fallen angel, you are loved.”_

The exorcisms always end the same way. A body, dead or dying, and a family left behind to pick up the pieces. In those few trembling moments of the aftermath, the little exchanging of looks that means _we did it_ is never allowed to last long. Sirens fill the air. Flashing lights, people with questions. So they leave under cover of darkness, Marcus with his hat and Tomas with his bowed head, hiding their faces from the world. Usually the police lights are still flashing behind them when they go.

Yet those brief moments before the sirens, when their work is done and they are allowed a moment to breathe . . . those are the moments that stay with them. When they sit side by side, slumped against the bedroom door, and Marcus is laughing through the pain and Tomas is looking at him like he hung the moon in the sky.

They are rarely thanked for their work.

It’s not about the thanking.

***

The demon in Denver was half mad already and of the kind that liked to make a carnival of their exorcisms. Tomas had had to break through the plywood boards the grieving family had nailed across the bedroom door in order to get to the young man inside. He had held him down while Marcus lashed him to the bed, and they stood as far back from the boy as they could stand, reciting litanies with crucifixes clasped in their sweating hands.

When the deed was done and they hurried from the run-down split level where the boy had been living, they found the city to be as unfamiliar and unforgiving as it had been when they entered the house. Thankfully their injuries were minor; only Marcus this time. He had been kicked viciously in the stomach, and for one agonizing moment after the blow, he had been sure he would spit up blood.

He’s got one arm slung around Tomas’ neck now, relying on him to keep him standing. They duck into an alley behind the building and listen for the sirens, but in this city, it’s impossible to be sure which sirens are meant for them.

“The dogs,” Marcus winces. They listen intently in the dark. Every dog in the neighborhood is mad with barking. Marcus can hear claws scrabbling at the inside of a door. “Does that sound like normal barking to you?”

“No,” says Tomas. They exchange confused looks. “Could we have-”

“No, no,” Marcus mutters. He knows the signs of possession better than his maths, and he knows when a demon is gone. It could not have remained behind.

He glances back up at the building.

“Something is going to happen,” he says. He hears Tomas murmur a prayer under his breath.

They stay for as long as they dare, listening to the dogs, until they hear the wail of an ambulance several streets away and know it’s there for the boy. When the police finally arrive, they find nothing in the alley but garbage, and two crows pecking at a dead cat.


	2. Chapter 2

For three days now a pall of ill will and misery has hung over downtown Denver. For three days the streets have been fog-filled, the sky smothered with smoke and croaking birds. The sandwiches were running out by the end of the second day, and when Tomas unwrapped the last one, he bit into a knot of maggots.

They spend their days praying for guidance in their hotel room. Marcus paces like a caged lion in the interior space, and has touched every surface a dozen times. Tomas isn’t sure that Marcus knows he does it. He claims every new room he enters, running his hands along the backs of chairs and leaning against every wall. He is compulsively tactile.

Tomas’ anxiety manifests itself not in nervous movement, but with increased fixation on the work at hand. He busies himself with the gossip of the city by buying every publication from the newsstands near their hotel. All the usual signs are there. Packs of feral dogs, spiders, and locusts. Men killing their wives and wives killing their children. It frustrates Tomas to no end that there seems to be nothing they can do to ease the city’s suffering. Finding the demon is impossible; they have an entire city to search, and they can’t very well go knocking on doors.

On the third day, after they have gone to bed, Tomas prays for a vision.

He gets one.

This time it comes to him in the guise of a nightmare. In the halfway place between sleeping and waking, awareness and not-awareness, it comes to him. He cannot move, cannot hide himself. He does not try to. It’s his first vision in nearly four weeks, and he’s willing to endure the pain.

Ever since he was a boy, Tomas had been blessed with a vivid imagination.

His desires would have been beautiful if they had been private, but in his new line of work there were no such things as private desires. The innermost sanctum of his mind, which ought to be his and his alone, was now well accustomed to being split open and inspected by a demon’s casual eye. They passed through his brain like tourists, grinding his face into the filth of his own fantasies. Yet Tomas endured it, insisted upon it even, because if he allowed just one more prophetic dream to rip through him like a ruined orgasm, it might just save a soul.

The pain that lances through his skull is surprisingly mild tonight.

Tomas finds himself trapped in a dark, tightly confined alleyway. The sky opens wide above him. He can catch glimpses of clouds through a dense tangle of iron fire escapes. It seems to him that they all lead into one another’s apartments. _Then there is no escape,_ he thinks as he slumps to the pavement, _you are running into fire-_

_-and his eyes are stinging from the smoke. They are burning his books, not that there were many to begin with. The magazines smoke and curl, but the laptop won’t burn. They crack it in half and tell him they are doing it for love-_

_-and he is lying on his back in a room locked from the outside, while a blue serpent with a_ _wide smile and eyes like chips of lead tells him they do not deserve him. He stares off into nothingness and he chews his own lips until they bleed-_

_-and the oily little devil nesting in his head is young and loud and does not know what it is to be afraid. It brings havoc down on the city with all its yowling and howling. It is not strong like the old ones, nor is it very cunning, but it can yell, and yell, and yell-_

_-and he can hear their voices in the other room, they are telling him that they are sending him away, and it is for his own good-_

_-and the walls are bleeding, oh God, the walls are bleeding, he tears at the paper and it peels like skin, his peels up his skin and it tears like paper, like burning paper-_

-and rips Tomas from his sleep with a half-mad cry of agony. For a moment, he is convinced his skin is paper.

The world spins around him and when he tries to sit up he vomits over the side of the bed. Tomas coughs wetly and digs his fingernails into his palm, grounding himself with pain.

He can hear someone shouting his name from a long way off.

Tomas tries to speak but the words won’t come. Shame coils in his gut. _It wasn’t even that bad this time._ He digs his fingernails harder into his palm. _What did you see? What did you even see?_ He tries to speak again but before he can he hears, “I’m here now, I’m here,” and suddenly he can feel Marcus’ hands on his shoulders, and his damp breath against his cheek.

The world seems to slip back into focus, and Tomas is greeted with a bad headache at the base of his skull. Marcus is kneeling beside his bed, a terrible look on his face.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he repeats, his hands moving to cup Tomas’ face and smooth his damp hair away from his forehead. The words sound well-worn in his mouth.

Tomas grips one of Marcus’ wrists and tells him everything. “Where did they send him?” Marcus asks with infinite patience, once Tomas is through. He holds eye contact with him and doesn’t move to stand.

Marcus’ perceived calm would’ve done a great deal to bring Tomas back to earth, if he hadn’t seen through it. Marcus operated under the assumption that nobody saw him and nobody cared to. An inconsequential vessel, a pitcher made valuable only by what it contained. It had never occurred to him that Tomas would learn him.

Yet he had. He had learned that Marcus hated the taste of coconut, and that he’d always wanted a cat. He knew that when he was a boy he daydreamed about kissing Burt Reynolds, and that sometimes when he’s in a good mood, he’ll sway his hips along to “Why You Do Me Wrong” on the tape deck.

“You think you’re so unknowable,” Tomas murmurs. A little laugh slips past his lips before he can swallow it.

“Tomas,” Marcus says, his voice rising in concern, “are you alright?”

“I’m alright,” Tomas assures him. His headache worsens. “They sent him to live with his grandmother in Louisiana.”

“They moved him?” Marcus says in shock, and it’s only then that Tomas realizes that sunshine is gleaming through the cracks in the window blinds. The first sunshine in four days. Whatever had been in the city was there no longer.

“We need to follow him,” says Tomas. He can feel himself beginning to tremble. His hands are shaking like the hands of a man who has seen war. “The spirit is weak this time. It is weak but it is loud.”

Marcus puts his arms around him and peppers him with scratchy kisses across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Tomas leans into the kisses, his eyes closing as he lays his head heavily on Marcus’ left shoulder. Marcus cups the back of his head and holds him there until the shaking stops.

 _“Quiero que termine,”_ Tomas mumbles, his voice muffled by Marcus’ shoulder. He nuzzles into his neck, chasing the scent of his skin. _"Nunca quiero volver a hacer esto.”_

_“Lo sé. Lo sé.”_

_“Pero pedí que esto pasara.”_

_“Lo sé.”_

_“¿Estás enojado?”_

_“Sí, pero eso no importa en este momento,”_ Marcus tells him. Hearing Marcus speak Spanish is an indescribable comfort. _“En este momento, necesito que reces conmigo. ¿Puedes hacer eso?”_

Tomas nods, and clasps his hands together. Marcus folds his hands over them, and together they begin to pray.

***

It’s raining on the road to New Orleans.

The sky is black, and the trees lining the road whip their wet branches back and forth at the whim of the wind. The Colorado sunshine is far behind them. Back into the darkness they go.

Marcus is driving, anger simmering in his blood. He wants to rage at Tomas. He wants to foam at the mouth. He wants to press him into a mattress with all the gentleness in the world and tell him that he is a man of God, that he is loved.

He wants to say, _I won’t let anything hurt you._ That’s laughable. How many times had he gripped Tomas’ shoulders and told him what to expect? _If you keep letting these demons crawl inside your head, you’ll get yourself killed._

But always he’s greeted with that same smile, that indulgent I-can-take-a-beating smile of Tomas Ortega, and the next thing Marcus knows they’re kneeling together in a litter-strewn parking lot while Tomas tries to get words out between hitching sobs. Marcus has never met a man who more deserves to walk the streets of eternal Paradise, but instead he’s here, letting unclean spirits flick through his memories and piss black ichor into his skull.

And Marcus fucking Keane gets to watch. Powerless and impotent and scared. He can’t talk Tomas down from the ledge, and he can’t even catch him as he falls. He can only scrape up the pieces and try to breathe life into them again.

Marcus realizes his grip is white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He wants to turn on the radio, but that would mean waking Tomas. He glances over at him once or twice, his heart softening at the sight of him sleeping with his head propped on one hand.

Seeing Tomas at rest, allowed peaceful dreams for once, makes Marcus’ heart ache almost as much as seeing him wearing his reading glasses in the morning, or going to bed with his hair still wet from the shower.

The day Tomas found him at St. Aquinas, Marcus had imagined him a gift from God. _Here is your reward, My child. Love him as I love him. Love him as I have loved you._

Not for the first time, Marcus wishes he were a poet. Tomas drinks up beautiful words like wine. Marcus thinks of his own clumsy attempt at a letter, begun and re-begun until the whole thing had been consigned to the rubbish bin. It was laughable.

Besides, Tomas and Jessica wrote letters because they could not have each other.

“You have me,” he says, quiet enough that Tomas won’t wake.

At this late hour, theirs is the only car on the road. Their headlights reflect harshly off the rain spraying up around their tires. Marcus is just considering turning the radio on after all when he hears Tomas’ breathing change. He looks over just in time to see him open his eyes.

Marcus thinks sometimes that they’re the color of new pennies, but pennies are far too cold for eyes so full of warmth.

“Morning, lad,” he says, even though it’s the middle of the night. “Feeling alright?”

Tomas groans a little in the back of his throat. When he stretches, Marcus can hear his joints popping. “Exhausted.”

“Sleep. We won’t be there for a while yet.”

Tomas pushes himself into a more upright position. “When did it start raining?”

“Mmm. Nearly an hour ago, maybe?” says Marcus, squinting to make out the road ahead through the rain. “You’ve been asleep for most of the ride.” When he looks back, he finds that Tomas is still looking at him steadily. Marcus looks back at the road. “What? I don’t have anything to say you haven’t already ignored.”

“You have to understand,” Tomas says softly. “These visions are helping me save people.”

“They don’t save _you,_ ” says Marcus. He can feel his madness bubbling up again, threatening to take hold of him. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

“You of all people should know why.”

“There’s a difference between wanting to help people and having a death wish, Tomas. I’m not fucking stupid.”

“Marcus,” Tomas says quietly, his eyes flickering from Marcus’ white face to the road. “Pull over.”

Marcus glances at the speedometer and realizes he’s a full twenty miles over the speed limit. He pulls the truck over and turns the key sharply in the ignition. The engine cuts out, and the lights turn on with a pop.

Marcus is abruptly aware of the sound of the wind outside, and the way it buffets the sides of the truck. It must be freezing out there.

“Why do you think I have a death wish?” Tomas asks him.

Marcus wants to tell him. He wants to force him to see, with that beautiful imagination of his, how he had shone when he preached before his parish. How the sun refracting through the stained glass windows had seemed to kiss his skin.

 _And now you’re here,_ Marcus wants to scream. _Now you’re here driving seven hours a day and sleeping on piss-stained mattresses in rent-by-the-hour motels and it’s all because of me, me, me. You’re a man of infinite love and you squander it on me._

Before he can say any of that, Tomas says, “I’m sorry if I have made myself offensive to you,” in a voice of such sarcastic bitterness that Marcus is startled into action.

“No,” he says hurriedly, awkwardly turning in his seat so he can face Tomas. “No, luv, no.”

He reaches out to hold his hand. The rain has by now turned the windows into seas of swampy glass. He can’t see five feet in any direction. They may as well be alone at the bottom of the ocean.

Now more than ever Marcus wishes he didn’t feel everything so deeply. Anger, despair, love. They aren’t gentle with him. They bite into his heart and do not let go.

“You’ve given me more hope than I’ve had in a long time, Tomas,” he says, completely sincere.

Tomas smiles shakily. “You know, the first time I saw you was in a vision.”

“I remember.”

“Do you know what I thought when I saw you?”

Marcus doesn’t say anything. His mouth his dry, and his words have left him.

“I saw you there, shining with the glory of Heaven in such a dark, dismal place, and I thought, this man . . .” Tomas squeezes his hand, runs his thumb along the back of it. “God must love this man _so much._ ”

They watch each other across the bottomless divide between their car seats. Their hands are still clasped together. It’s Tomas who leans in first.

His mouth is impossibly soft, and too gentle against Marcus’ chapped lips.

Marcus’ hands move to rest on Tomas’ waist, and when he slides them a little farther, letting them fit into the small of Tomas’ back, Tomas lets out a small, yearning moan that makes Marcus’ heart want to burst. He brushes his tongue against Tomas’ mouth without realizing it, and when Tomas parts his lips for him, Marcus breaks the kiss.

He feels like a teenager felt up for the first time. He hates himself for it. “You can’t sabotage yourself like this, Tomas,” Marcus whispers, before he’s tempted to kiss him again. “Not like this.”

Tomas pulls back, the flush of shame already rising in his cheeks. “Was I wrong?” he says, heartbreakingly gentle.

“You’re not wrong,” Marcus says miserably. He looks at his hands, at the gearshift, at the floor. Anywhere but at Tomas. “I want you like I want God, and I’d die for you like I’d die for God. You’re my rising and setting sun. But you’re also a good man with a terrible streak of self-destruction in you, and I am only another way for you to hurt yourself.”

The hurt in Tomas’ voice when he says, “I don’t understand,” is almost enough to make Marcus wrench open the door and escape into the rain.

“You can’t kiss me like that,” Marcus tells him. He can feel that anger, ever-present and patiently waiting for its turn. Anger is easy, easy, easy. “You can’t kiss me on a whim because you want to ruin yourself. You can’t kiss me and then go la-dee-dah-ing around like nothing happened, like you do after one of those fucking visions. I won’t let you use me for that.”

“Oh,” says Tomas. “Oh,” he says again, his hand rising to his face, and Marcus has just long enough to think, _please don’t wipe your mouth, I couldn’t bear it,_ before Tomas wipes his mouth like he’s been ill.

Tomas’ face is scarlet. His eyes no longer have the gleam of new pennies, but the burnt glow of embers in a dying hearth. “I thought,” he says, but the words get caught in his throat and he tries again. “I know that my kisses are worth nothing, but I had hoped they would be worth something to you.”

Marcus looks at Tomas’ face and thinks, _I break everything I touch._

“They mean everything to me, Tomas,” Marcus says weakly. “Even if you give them to me for the wrong reasons.”

He reaches for Tomas’ hand again, hesitates, but holds it anyway. Even now Tomas doesn’t let go.

“They’re not worthless,” Marcus says, and prays to God that Tomas believes him.

“You saw my humiliation,” Tomas says abruptly, as though forcing himself to get the words out. “You saw my debasement, how public it was. You bore witness to it in Casey’s room.”

“That was a mistake,” Marcus says desperately. “You aren’t ruined because of it. You aren’t unclean. God doesn’t love you any less, and neither-”

He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

“If that did not ruin me,” Tomas says quietly, “then why should this?”

For a moment, Marcus is completely at a loss for words. The silence between them is devastating, as though Tomas has opened a window and let a sliver of night into the truck with them. He feels as raw and exposed as a live wire.

“It was cruel of me to bring up that mistake. I know it upsets you to think of it,” Tomas continues, his voice almost too soft to make out over the rain outside. “It’s something I think of every time I think about kissing you. And I do think about kissing you, Marcus. Sometimes it’s all I can think about. I am not ruined, and this, this certainly was not a whim.”

He gives Marcus’ hand another gentle squeeze.

“I see you,” he whispers. “Inside and out, I see you. It has been a pleasure and an honor to learn you.”

Marcus’ heart is in his throat. He pulls his hand away and looks back at the road. “The things you say to me, sometimes,” he says, not looking at him. “The things you say.”

Marcus turns the key in the ignition. He pulls back onto the road the moment he hears the engine roar to life.

“I’m not fit,” he says. The road ahead of him is water-spotted and blurry. He’s not sure if it’s the rain, or if his eyes are watering. “I’m not what you need. There are things you want that I can’t give.”

“We will pray,” Tomas says, settling back into his seat. “We will pray,” He rests his hand on Marcus’ shoulder. Marcus stiffens, then relaxes. “I’m sorry. I . . .” Marcus hears an audible click as Tomas swallows, “. . . sometimes I let myself get carried away when I want something very badly.”

“We’ll pray about it,” Marcus agrees quietly.

Tomas smiles wide when he hears this, and Marcus wonders if there’s anything he wouldn’t do to see that smile. “I’m glad,” he says, squeezing Marcus’ shoulder. “Do you want to listen to the radio?”

Marcus does, and they listen to Ella Fitzgerald all the way to New Orleans.


	3. Chapter 3

They find a small, crooked house wedged between two larger houses on the outskirts of New Orleans. The mint green paint is wearing out around the doorframe, exposing the raw wood beneath, and ashen hanging plants drip from the boxes outside the second-floor windows. The painted cross hanging on the door rattles in the wind.

They are sitting in the truck, looking through the rain-lashed windows at the house. “You talk to the grandmother while I check on the boy,” says Marcus. “She’ll prefer you to me.”

“Hmm?”

Marcus nods at the cross on the door. “You know how elderly women are about young priests.”

“Don’t start,” Tomas laughs. It feels good to have that laughter back. “Perhaps I should check on the boy and _you_ talk to the grandmother. She may prefer someone her own age.”

“Fuck’s sake,” says Marcus, his voice pained, but Tomas can see his eyes crinkling at the edges. “Is this more of that _sophisticated humor_ you claim is too high-brow for me to understand?”

“Exactly. I am far more sophisticated, we have established this.”

It’s an old game between them, and one that never fails to get a laugh out of Marcus. “Is that right?”

“I once saw you eat a burger out of the trash.”

They exchange fond looks, and their laughter devolves into sigh, and then into silence. It’s a familiar moment of silence. The last few seconds before they hurl themselves once more unto the breach.

Over the sound of the pouring rain, they hear a crash. One of the upstairs windows blows out, showering the plants and the pavement in glassy dust. “Let’s go,” says Marcus, and they open their doors in unison and step out into the rain.

It’s bucketing down in torrents, and Tomas wonders briefly if it’s going to flood the street. They tuck their bags under their coats and march up to the door, crowding against it to try for shelter beneath the hanging plants. Tomas knocks, to no reply.

Marcus knocks too, harder. He tries the doorknob and it rattles ineffectively. “We don’t have a lot of time,” he says loudly, voice raised to be heard over the rain.

“Right,” says Tomas. Marcus stands aside.

Tomas slams his boot into the door just next to the lock, and the wood splinters. A second kick bangs the door open hard enough to hit the inside wall and bounce back. It opens into a narrow mudroom with empty pegs in the walls and a dog dish by the door that looks like it hasn’t been full in some time. There’s an open door directly across from them, through which they can see the flickering of TV light. Tomas enters first, and Marcus follows.

“Hello?” says Tomas cautiously, and from the room up ahead he hears a woman gasp.

“He’ll hear you,” she whispers. “He’ll hear you.”

Tomas enters the living room. The woman in front of the TV sits hunched in her armchair, with red-rimmed eyes and nervous hands. Tomas unzips his raincoat to show her his collar, and the tension in her shoulders seems to drain.

“Thank the Lord, Father,” she murmurs. Tomas realizes that the TV is turned to a gospel network, and the volume is up as loud as it will go. “I’m so sorry I didn’t hear your knocking, but . . .”

She blinks back her tears. “I’ve been trying to drown him out,” she continues, her voice a hushed whisper. “He’s destroying my office. That unspeakable boy. He’s destroying it.”

They hear another crash from upstairs, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. Marcus bolts for the staircase.

“Who is he?” The woman cries, her voice rising, as Marcus disappears up the stairs. “Why is he with you?”

“He is a brother in Christ,” says Tomas, kneeling beside her chair. “We are here because God directed our steps. Your grandson is in terrible danger, but we can help him. We’re pretty good at it.”

“ _He’s_ in danger?” she sniffs angrily. Tomas can see that she’s ten, twenty years older than Marcus, with pleasantly auburn hair still gray at the roots. “I brought him into my house, I tried to help him, and he . . . he . . .”

“May I pray with you, Mrs . . ?” Tomas asks, laying a cautious hand on her arm.

“Kepler,” she says. “Amanda Kepler.”

He offers his other hand to her, and she takes it. They bow their heads to pray.

“Heavenly Father,” Tomas begins. “I pray that You might grant us Your guidance, and Your light, as we attempt free Your servant from the tyranny of the Devil’s influence.”

“Lord God, I pray that You will continue to uphold me in this dark hour,” she continues, “and that in the face of the Devil’s corruption and lies, I will remain firm in my faith.”

“I place my faith in Your promise, and in Your devotion. I ask that You place a divine Symbol over the heart of this young man, that he might be protected from all harm, and that he might be reminded of Your bountiful and unfailing love.”

“I ask that You will provide for me in my time of need, and that You will return to me tenfold what this sinner has taken.”

 _“I am speaking now to the entity inside this servant of the Lord,”_ cries Marcus’ voice, ghostly and distant from the second floor.

“Amen,” Tomas finishes hurriedly, all but leaping to his feet. “Stay here,” he says. “Atay safe, and pray for us. If God wills it, this will be over quickly.”

There’s fear in Mrs. Kepler’s eyes, but she nods, and Tomas runs for the stairs. He takes them two at a time as Marcus’ voice grows louder, thundering over the the stampeding of Tomas’ heart. _“. . . and powerful in the holy authority of our ministry, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the Devil . . .”_

Tomas sees a door swinging off its hinges and throws it aside.

He sees three things, one after the other.

The first thing he sees are the books, papers, and shattered splinters scattered across the floor, and the desk overturned against the wall. The room looks torn to pieces, as though by a pack of wild dogs.

The second thing he sees is Marcus Keane, standing with his crucifix in his hand and his back to one of the windows on the far wall. His feet are firmly planted, but his hands are shaking. Tomas sees blood slicking the side of his face, and his stomach drops.

The third thing he sees is the boy from his vision, too thin and still bleeding from the mouth, and he snaps his head up to look at him and says, **Father Tomas. I’ve heard of you. You’re that lying, adulterous priest with amouth that services demon cunt.**

Marcus leaps at him and the demon springs away, but he manages to latch onto his wrist and tug him back towards him, bending his arm behind his back. The possessed boy screeches high and loud, clawing at Marcus’ thigh with nails already half torn from their bedding. _“May Thy mercy, Lord, descend upon us . . .”_ Marcus pants, struggling to hold him still.

 _“As great as our hope in Thee,”_ intones Tomas, advancing in the room, Bible in hand and crucifix raised. His voice is completely steady. _“We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects.”_

 **They burned his books, you know,**  the demon coos. Its voice is as dark and slow as an oil spill. **They told him they would lead him to the Devil. Misguided little whelps.**

 _“In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ,”_ Tomas cries, his voice rising, _“may you be snatched away and driven from the Church of God and from the souls made in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the blood of the Divine Lamb!”_ His eyes flicker from the demon’s to Marcus’. An unspoken question. _Can you hold him?_

Marcus nods and holds his crucifix up to the creature’s neck. The skin it touches begins to bubble and warp.

 **Her books should burn!** the demon spits through torn and bloodied lips, flecks of pinkish foam spraying the ground. **The old sow’s books should burn!** He grinds his heels against the ground and howls incoherently as Marcus tightens his arms around him, wrestling him as he tries to hurl him off.

 **Get off me!** he screeches, thrashing in Marcus’ arms. **Get off me! Get off get off get off get off-**

He breaks Marcus grip and hurls himself against the wall, which crumples slightly under the impact. The demon begins scrambling at the wallpaper, as though trying to burrow out of the room, and when that fails he screams and screams and screams, and the house shakes beneath Tomas’ feet.

 _“The blood of the martyrs and the pious intercession of all the Saints command you!”_ they say as one, standing shoulder to shoulder and advancing on the demon. _“Cursed dragon and all diabolic legions, we abjure you by the living God!”_

The demon turns to face them, muscles working furiously in his arms as he clenches and unclenches his fists. Tomas can see every vein standing out under the boy’s tortured skin.

 **Have you ever gotten your dick wet, Marcus?** the creature sneers. **I know you haven’t. Maybe you’d rather spread your legs for a better man. Would you like that, you old gray mongrel? You’re a bit past the expiration date. Can you even get it up anymore?**

_“God the Father commands you!”_

_“God the Son commands you!”_

_“God the Holy Spirit commands you!”_

**Like anyone would fuck you, with your face like a car accident. Not even him. He’ll fuck a demon, he’ll fuck another man’s wife, but he hasn’t tried to fuck you yet, has he?**

_“Fall beneath the all-powerful hand of God!”_ Tomas roars in a terrible voice that drowns out the thunder, drowns out even Marcus’ voice as he speaks with him. _“Tremble and flee when we invoke the holy and terrible name of Jesus, this name which causes Hell to tremble, this name to which the Virtues, Powers, and Dominations of Heaven are humbly submissive, this name which cherubim and seraphim praise unceasingly!”_

 **Stop,** he screams finally, **stop, you can’t do this, you can’t _do_ this! You don’t have the right! You have no authority over me!**

“You’ve never known fear, have you, _demon,_ ” Marcus snarls as Tomas continues the prayer. He flicks a vial of holy water into the demon’s face, contemptuously, like he’s flicking a cigarette ash, and the demon drops to the ground and begins to kick and scream like an angry child. “You’ll know it now.”

The wind is roaring, battering the sides of the house. The boy’s eyes snap open and they are acidic blue, rolling in his head like the shifting coils of a blue serpent. His back bends like a bow being strung, and he arches off the ground in agony.

 **I will stay in him for days, for days,** he says, his voice a panicky wail rattling up from his chest. **Days, weeks . . !**

Marcus falls to his knees beside the boy and holds his head still with both hands. “You are young, and weak, and loud,” he snarls. “You will not torment this young man a moment longer. _Do you hear my words, which are the words of God?”_

The demon chokes on his own tongue.

 _“Ashes on the earth, you are redeemed,”_ Marcus declares over him, crossing himself and placing one hand on the boy’s sweat-soaked forehead. _“Star of the morning, you are forgiven. Fallen angel, you are loved.”_

 _“Fallen angel,”_ Tomas breathes, _“you are loved.”_

The storm outside falls silent.

The howling wind gives way to the drizzly pattering of raindrops on the leaves of hanging plants.

The boy shudders, his whole body tensing, then relaxes. His eyes roll beneath his closed eyelids for a moment before they open fully. He blinks up at Marcus, disoriented. His eyes are a dewy, mossy green.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks. Tomas knows the exact moment the boy sees Tomas’ collar. Tears well up in his eyes, and he begins to stammer. “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

Marcus shushes him, shifting himself so he can cradle the boy’s head in his lap. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says. Tomas can hear the ferocity in his voice, just barely kept in check for the sake of tenderness. “You have done _nothing_ wrong, no matter who or what says otherwise, do you understand? You are a prince, a son of God, and you are _loved._ ”

Tomas kneels beside them, one hand on Marcus’ shoulder and the other on the boy’s. They whisper amongst each other while the rain gives way to ash-gray clouds, then sun. For a moment all is forgotten. The grandmother downstairs, the books, the demons. For a moment it is just them, three children with the same Father, comforting each other the only way they can. When Marcus asks if he’s ready to go downstairs, the boy says yes.

His name is Nathaniel. They don’t forget him. They never forget a son of God.

***

The latest hotel room is painted an ugly mustard color, complete with a greasy off-white bathroom and a plastic folding table. There are two drab prints of desert scenes over the beds, one featuring a pair of cowboys relaxing around a fire, and the other a lone mariachi player hanging out of a stage coach. “You should take that bed,” says Marcus, hoping to get a laugh but getting only a vaguely affirmative hum.

He lets Tomas shower first while he goes downstairs to look for a decent meal. Nathaniel’s exorcism plays itself out again and again in his mind. It had been a quick and painless exorcism, compared to most. Nathaniel had fought like an archangel. He’d be alright, that boy. Even with a family like that, he’d be alright. His shamelessness had yet to be beaten out of him, something Marcus heartily envied.

Marcus ends up having to leave the hotel to find food. He sets off down the sidewalk looking for the nearest burger joint, and admires the soft light of sunset as the evening wakes New Orleans from her slumber. He can hear music playing nearby, good music that makes him nod his head and step in time when he walks.

He buys four burgers and two cups of weak tea at the first fast food place he finds. He adds a salad after a moment of hesitation. _You don’t even know if he likes tea,_ Marcus thinks to himself as he walks back, delighted by this unexpected gap in his knowledge. It makes him wonder what else he doesn’t know about Tomas.

Marcus is still thinking about it by the time he gets back to their room on the third floor. He has to balance the second cup precariously on his knee before he can swipe the keycard.

Inside, Tomas is toweling off his hair with his usual fastidiousness. His briefs are snug against his hips, and slightly damp from his skin. Tomas catches Marcus’ eye and smiles as he cradles his neck with the towel.

“Did you get enough for both of us?” he asks.

Marcus looks away quickly and drops his spoils of war on the folding table. “I got you a salad,” he mumbles incoherently. He can hear the rustle of fabric behind him, and knows Tomas is putting on a shirt.

“I’m sorry?”

“I got you a salad,” Marcus says a little louder. “You mentioned wanting real food.”

“Thank you,” says Tomas earnestly, coming up behind him. He pops the plastic lid off the salad. “I think it’s been days since the last time I ate a vegetable.”

To Marcus’ dismay, Tomas is wearing one of his undershirts. It has long been established that what belongs to one belongs to the other, but it’s another thing entirely to see that ratty old thing lying stark white against Tomas’ skin.

Tomas’ hair is still dripping. Marcus can smell the hotel soap he used under his arms and between his legs.

“It’s just lettuce,” Marcus says weakly. “I’m not sure that counts as a vegetable.”

He watches as Tomas murmurs grace under his breath, his hand hovering above the plastic container like he’s going to sanctify it.

“Have you looked outside?” Marcus asks when Tomas is through. “No clouds. No rain. People are happy.”

Tomas goes to the window and peers through the blinds. “Oh,” he says, pleased, and sets the salad down long enough to roll the blinds up. “It’s a beautiful night, too. I almost think the sun is going to catch up to us.”

“Yeah,” says Marcus. “Maybe.”

He watches Tomas standing by the window, his dark skin glowing red and blue and green in the multicolored lights of the city, and feels his heart tighten in his chest.

“I’m taking a shower,” Marcus announces to the room. “Save me one of those burgers, yeah?”

“I’ll save you three.”

“Do you drink tea?”

“What?”

“I’ve never thought to ask.”

“I do,” says Tomas. “Thank you for buying some.”

“It’s nothing,” says Marcus, already walking stiffly into the bathroom and closing the door behind him. Immediately he turns and presses his forehead against the wall with a dull thump. He’d practically _fled_.

Marcus can feel a familiar yearning rising up in him, without warning or pity. A yearning to be held, and cradled like he’d cradled Nathaniel. _You are a prince. A son of God_.

He steps into the shower and turns the water as cold as it will go. There are ways of dealing with such desires when they arise, and this is one of them. The shower head sputters for a moment. The water comes out gray, then clear. The pressure is barely a drizzle but the temperature is just cold enough to clear the fog from Marcus’ brain.

It’s so rare that he needs a cold shower to drive his daydreams away. His fantasies are, after all, no filthier now than they had been when he was a boy. Back then he had been full of idle, helpless daydreams of being kissed by older, stronger men. He filled his head with thoughts of what his wedding night would have been like, if God hadn’t called him into the priesthood.

Marcus closes his eyes against the spray and thinks of Tomas. He thinks of the two of them together, naked on soft, white sheets, so unlike the stained cotton of a roadside motel. Tomas is looking down at him, his hands braced against the mattress on either side of Marcus’ head. He leans down and kisses him as a husband kisses his bride.

In these dreams, Marcus is not so scarred and wraith-like as he is in life. Here he is tanned and lean and strong, and Tomas delights in his body as much as Marcus delights in his.

A sigh escapes Marcus’ lips, and he quickly opens his eyes to start soaping himself up. A cockroach is drowning silently on the shower floor. He crushes it under his heel and watches its grayish smear swirl down the drain. _This is my reality,_ he thinks bitterly. _A cockroach reality. A stained cotton reality._

He stays in the shower for longer than he needs to, and hopes Tomas won’t be awake when he gets out.

***

Distant strains of jazz float by on the cool night air. Tomas sits by the window and takes it all in, his hands still cupped around his tea, enjoying the warm styrofoam more than the tea itself. His empty salad box has been neatly discarded in the dustbin along with an empty burger wrapper. Tomas listens to the shower running in the other room and wonders when he became so heartsick.

Tomas sips his tea and stares out into the night, his heart too full for sleep despite his exhaustion. He can hear the tail end of a song in the distance. A girl’s voice, sweetly singing. _With a smile like a knife, for the rest of my life, oh baby, my baby scares me sometimes. Oh baby, my baby scares me . . ._

Tomas smiles. He is intimately familiar with Marcus’ moods- his faith, his anger, his playfulness- yet never once was afraid of him. It had simply never occurred to him to be afraid, not even when they’d first met in person and Marcus had thrust him against the wall. There had been no fear. Only rapture.

 _He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty,_ comes a tempting, treacherous thought in the back of Tomas’ mind. _Think of how he’d handle you, if you let him._

Tomas closes his eyes and shivers. There’s a reason he shuts down those trains of thought before they leave the station. There’s a vein of insatiable carnality in him, almost as strong as that self-destructive streak Marcus is so fond of complaining about. That self-destructive streak may lead him to hurt himself, but the carnality hurts everyone it touches. It hurt Jessica, and Tomas will go to the Devil himself before he lets it hurt Marcus too.

Better not to daydream.

But there’s nothing Tomas can do about the dreams that come at night. They sneak up on him and catch him unawares when he’s defenseless. The guilty wet dreams he had so often suffered when Jessica filled his whole heart are nothing compared to these; these ones are gentle, and otherworldly, and sometimes he’ll wake hard, but never wet.

One in particular visits him often. In it, Marcus reaches into his mouth, and when he withdraws his hand it is slick with black ichor up to the elbow, and the many-legged thing that has nested in Tomas’ brain is crushed in the grip of his hand.

“All better now, yeah?” he says, leaning forward to kiss him.

Tomas always wakes before their lips touch.

And so it goes, day after day, and neither of them say anything about it. A hand on the small of the other’s back when they’re getting into the truck. A satisfying shove with a shoulder when one of them makes the other laugh. Their thighs touching as they sit next to each other in some backwoods church on Sunday, two specters passing through town in the back row.

A fearful man whose whole stock and store was in enduring fear and instilling it in others, and a man who denied fear even unto foolishness.

Tomas sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. Exhaustion is tugging at him ever more insistently, but he can still hear the shower running. He sets down his now empty cup of tea before shutting the window against the nighttime chill. He leaves the burgers on the table and goes to kneel by his bed, pausing beside the one with the cowboy painting before acquiescing to the one with the mariachi player.

Tomas kneels beside his bed to pray and finds himself at a loss for words, a rare occurrence. He lingers there for a long moment as the seconds tick by.

“Heavenly Father,” he finally murmurs, “if it is Your will, and if You have brought us together by design and not by chance, I ask that You bless the union of my love and I. I open my heart to You and lay myself before You, with all my desires laid bare. In Your divine wisdom you have provided me with a partner who is both noble and sincere, courageous and beautiful, and to whom I might devote myself completely and without restraint. I ask that if our mutual love was indeed by Your design, that You might consecrate it and make it holy in Your name. In the name of the Most High God, and of Jesus of Nazareth, amen.”

Tomas’ heart is pounding in his chest. He feels like some red-faced young suitor come to ask his sweetheart’s father for her hand in marriage. He realizes that, in some ways, that is precisely what he has done.

Tomas takes a moment to breathe before climbing into bed and tucking the blankets up to his chin. He falls asleep with words of prayer still buzzing in his head, and the mattress springs digging painfully into his back.

***

That night, Marcus has a nightmare.

This is not uncommon.

He is back in Gabriel’s room. His arms are lashed to his sides, and the bones of his forearms are digging sharply into his ribs. The Baptist is hanging suspended three feet above the mattress, his back hunched and his mouth ribboning greenish-gray drool. His arms have been distended so very far that his knuckles brush the bedsheets.

His mouth opens wide, and up from the chasm of his throat comes a voice like a dead man’s gasp. **You fucking hypocrite, lusting after what you can’t have. Do you think I want your decrepit hands on me?**

It is Gabriel no longer, but Tomas, and Marcus can feel every vein in his body under his skin. Burning, burning, burning like the plague. Tomas’ body hangs in the air before him, violated by demonkind, and Marcus tries to wake up but the dream takes hold of him and refuses to let him go. He finds his voice and babbles the words that once struck fear into the hearts of demons, but the Baptist wearing Tomas’ face only laughs at him and spits out a mouthful of bloody teeth.

 **You did this to me!** Tomas is screaming now, tar-black mouth wide and unmoving. **You have nothing to offer me but one last trembling drop of faith! Hah! I am a gift your God gave you for love and you want to _fuck_ me, you mongrel. And now you roll over and show me your belly, expecting not to be kicked! Five quid for a boy! Five quid for a dog! Five quid for a man on his knees! _Five quid! Five-_**

Marcus feels an arm encircle his waist.

**Five quid! Five quid! Five-**

The slight dampness of warm breath on the back of his neck. A hesitation, then a kiss.

 ** _Five quid, five . . ._** but the voice is already fading, the dream dissolving around him. Marcus becomes aware of the bed beneath him, soaked with sweat, and the blankets twisted tightly around his legs.

Then he feels Tomas- God, _Tomas-_ pressed up against him from behind, his arm around his waist and pulling him closer. He can feel his warm, regular puffs of breath against his shoulder blades.

Marcus is too fatigued and too desperately grateful to consider the consequences of tonight. He rolls over and clenches his fists in the front of Tomas’ worn-out undershirt. He clings to him like he’s afraid Tomas will turn to ash in his hands.

“Thank you,” he chokes.

“I’ve got you,” says Tomas. Words that Marcus has heard from his own mouth a thousand times. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m scared,” he tells Tomas. “All the time. You have all the foolish bravery of a child but I . . . I’m so scared, Tomas. Ever since I was a boy I was scared.”

“You are braver than I could ever be,” Tomas murmurs, his lips just brushing Marcus’ hairline. “You stand in the doorway and push back the night, even though you are afraid.”

“I love you,” Marcus whispers. “I love you so much.”

The admission should shake the earth. It should split open the seventh seal. It does not.

“I love you too,” Tomas says gently. He lowers his mouth to Marcus’, letting their lips meet. It’s soft and warm and almost innocent. The kiss in the truck seems a thousand miles away.

When they part, Tomas rests his forehead against Marcus’. Marcus can feel his breath on his face, as though he’s run a marathon. _He’s in my bed,_ Marcus thinks, _and it feels as natural as love_.

They linger like that for a long moment before shifting positions, Tomas on his back and Marcus with his head against Tomas’ chest. Tomas strokes his hair with one hand, his thumb brushing the curve of Marcus’ ear. “Was it true?” Tomas asks, with all the gentleness in the world. “What the demon in Nathaniel said, was it true?”

Marcus knows what he means without asking. He tucks his face against Tomas’ chest, nuzzles against the chest hair just visible above his neckline. “Yes,” he says, his voice muffled. “It was.”

“That was what you meant, when you told me there were things I wanted which you could not provide.”

Marcus doesn’t answer.

“I wonder why they did not use this against you until now.”

“A demon can only use your secrets against you if you are ashamed of them,” Marcus says dully. “I wasn’t ashamed of it, until you kissed me in the truck.”

“Oh,” says Tomas, something unreadable in his voice. “I see.”

He adjusts himself a little, just enough for him to comfortably get both arms around Marcus. He kisses him on the forehead, the bridge of his nose, and back to his mouth again. Marcus feels Tomas’ tongue brush against his lip and thinks _oh God_ before pulling away.

“Was that too . . ?”

“No,” Marcus says hurriedly.

“I want you, you know,” Tomas says slowly, “but I want your happiness first, and there are other ways to love one another.”

“I want you too,” Marcus says softly. Saying it out loud seems to lift an unimaginable burden from his shoulders. A cross he no longer has to bear. “I don’t . . . know what that will look like. I’m not a young man anymore. Not like you.”

“That makes no difference,” Tomas whispers. “I promise you, none.”

Marcus opens his hand for Tomas’, and when he puts his hand in his, Marcus begins to trace the lines of Tomas’ palm with his thumb. “Before the Church chucked me out, I was married to God,” he says.

“You _are_ married to God,” Tomas says sharply. Marcus looks up, surprised at the sudden intensity in his voice. “You have been divorced from the Church, not from Him.”

Marcus smiles a little, and returns his gaze to Tomas’ hand. “God doesn’t need me. He never did.”

“Of course He doesn’t need you, Marcus. He doesn’t need anyone. But it is enough that He _wants_ you, isn’t it?” Tomas gives Marcus’ hand a gentle squeeze. “May I pray a Scripture over you, Marcus?”

Marcus nods mutely.

 _“Two are better than one,”_ Tomas prays softly, _“for they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fail, the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two . . .”_

He pauses for a moment, hesitant to continue, but Marcus brushes his lips cautiously against the hair on Tomas’ chest, so he keeps going. _“Again, if two lie together, then they have heat. But how can one be warm alone? And if the enemy prevails against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not easily broken.”_

“Amen,” they say as one.

Marcus laces their fingers together and stares, as though studying the way their hands connect.

“Do you think,” he says, so quiet that Tomas has to lean forward to hear him, “that when God knit us together in our mums, He shaped us for one another? Do you think that when He formed our hands, He formed them just for this . . .”

He gives Tomas’ hand another little squeeze.

“I do,” says Tomas tremulously. “I do think that.”

“They will use this against us,” says Marcus, and for a moment even he himself isn’t sure whether he means the demons or the Church.

“I was ashamed of Jessica,” Tomas’ voice is still soft, “and that is why she was used against me. But you . . .” He presses another kiss to the top of Marcus’ head. The action is achingly familiar. “I have never been ashamed of you, and I never will be, _león de mi corazón.”_

“Soul of a poet,” says Marcus, and for the first time in a long while, he feels strong.


	4. Chapter 4

The demons flee no faster, but Marcus feels like they do. He swears and howls and bloodies his knuckles as good as any demon, and he does not need to look behind him to know Tomas is there.

They sleep together every night now, curled up around each other like two animals against the cold. Some nights one will hold the other, and other nights they’ll sleep chest to chest, close enough to breathe one another’s air. Mostly they sleep as they did that first night, Marcus’ head on Tomas’ chest as he listens to his heartbeat. He has made a place for himself there, tucked against Tomas’ heart.

Their reputation grows, and as it grows, the demons try ever harder to dig their festering fingers into their open hearts. They play with faces and voices, and make grotesque puppets of the people they inhabit. They call Tomas _fertile_ in a way that makes Marcus’ stomach turn, and they relish the look in his eyes when they tell him the kind of treatment Tomas can expect when he steps willingly into the arms of Hell.

 **The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,** they say, **and that boy’s got a real hard-on for good intentions.**

Sometimes all it takes to turn Tomas’ head is the thought of a warm bed, a hot meal, and a wet mouth. His desires are more earthly than Marcus’, and the demons delight in tormenting him for it. It isn’t long before Marcus takes notice.

“We can’t possibly afford this,” says Tomas when they set down their bags in the first hotel in months that hasn’t been cash only.

Marcus has already left his coat crumpled on the floor and begun his usual tactile investigation of the room. _“Consider ye the ravens of the field,”_ he intones solemnly.

“It smells like lemons,” Tomas says in wonder, still looking around. He sits down on the edge of the bed and sinks into the foam mattress.

Marcus’ heart swells. “You like it?”

“Goodnight,” Tomas says, falling backwards with a dull _fwump_ and spreading his arms wide. “Tell the Devil I’m not coming today.”

“He’ll be disappointed,” Marcus says coaxingly, which makes Tomas laugh. “I’ll wake you for breakfast then, shall I?”

“There’s breakfast?”

“Yeah, they’ve got a whole kit downstairs.”

Tomas sighs happily. “So, God will provide the money, is that it?”

Marcus nods. “God and Bennett.”

“He’s giving us money now as well as intelligence?”

“Only on the condition that we spend it on furthering your education.”

“I am not sure lemon-scented hotel rooms count towards furthering my education.”

“I’m deciding that they do,” Marcus tells him, and that’s the end of the shitty motels for a while, at least until Bennett catches on.

The change in Tomas’ attitude is immediate. Marcus’ spirits soar every time he sees Tomas step dripping from the bathroom, still toweling off his hair and cheerfully praising the hot water. They sleep on soft, clean linen, and wake to a room that doesn’t smell of bleach and stale cigarettes.

They never stay long. There is always a new evil, a new hell awaiting them. Dogging their footsteps and snapping at their heels, never allowing them a moment’s respite.

Until one day, it does.

It happens in Oregon, after six days of sweating over the exorcism of a four year old girl in uptown Portland. When they finally leave the townhouse and step blinking into the noonday sun, Tomas asks, “What now?” and Marcus doesn’t have an answer.

They stay in town and wait for a call from Bennett that doesn’t come. Tomas reads every publication from back to front, and Marcus looks to the sky and waits for the western wind. For the first time in months there is nowhere to go. No visions, no demons, no sleeping in the car. It is as though the Virgin herself had lifted their Bibles from their hands and reminded them that on the seventh day, God rested.

Tomas ends up sleeping for fifteen hours while Marcus goes outside and watches the birds. The sky is as clear as a drop of water, with a few airplane lights blinking forlornly in the twilight glow.

When Marcus returns to their room and swipes his keycard, he finds Tomas still a lump obscured entirely by blankets. “Hey,” he whispers. “Hey. No, don’t get up,” he adds hurriedly when he hears Tomas stir. “I’ll join you.”

Marcus unzips his coat and leaves it tossed carelessly onto the nearest chair, and when he’s down to his knickers Tomas pulls the blanket back and lets him slip in beside him. Marcus shudders at the sudden temperature change; Tomas’ skin is furnace hot compared to the chilly Portland air.

“You’re too cold,” Tomas mumbles sleepily, but he lets Marcus cuddle closer, and he smiles when Marcus kisses his cheek.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Honestly?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m thinking of growing a beard.”

“Really?” Marcus laughs, delighted. “Tomas Ortega, the rugged outdoorsman.”

Tomas’ brow crinkles self-consciously. “Not one of my better ideas?”

“I didn’t say that,” Marcus says, running the palm of his hand along Tomas’ smooth jaw. “I’d like it. It’d make you look older.”

It was a thought he had yet to voice, but Marcus often thought there was something melancholy about young priests. The full flower of youth, collared and chastened and shamed. There was a kind of sad nobility to the image. A living martyrdom.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Tomas asks softly.

Marcus kisses him deeply, the kind of kiss they’ve grown accustomed to behind closed doors. When they part they take a moment to rest their foreheads together, and Marcus is suddenly aware of the quiet sounds of the city, and the fluttering of pigeon wings outside the window.

“Tomas,” he whispers.

Tomas hums in response.

Marcus licks his lips and swallows. “When,” he says, “when you were with . . . Jessica . . . your desire for her made you stray from your faith.”

Tomas’ breathing, which Marcus has felt warm and damp against his face until now, stops. Marcus soldiers on. “If we act on our desire,” he says desperately, “won’t you feel the same pain that you felt then?”

Tomas kisses the corner of Marcus’ mouth. He lingers there for an agonizingly long moment before pulling away, as though gathering his thoughts.

“It is God who brought us together,” he says slowly, “so the vows I have made to God and the vows I have made to you are one and the same.”

“Let me hold you,” Marcus all but sobs. His arms tighten around Tomas as he says it. “Just let me hold you. Let me enjoy you.”

 _There’s nothing vulgar about that,_ he wants to say. _Nothing unchaste. I’m so scared, my friend. Please, please, please._

They shift positions, Tomas sitting up and Marcus moving to sit on the edge of the bed. The blankets fall from their shoulders but Marcus’ blood is already too hot for him to feel the chill.

Marcus slips his hands under Tomas’ thighs and tugs him gently into his lap. Tomas squirms a little to get comfortable, his weight settling in, and Marcus’ breath catches in his throat. He’s held Tomas before, in the throes of fever or nightmares or worse, but never like this. Never so close, and warm, and willing.

“You’re heavier than I thought you’d be,” Marcus murmurs against his throat. Tomas groans and tilts his head, letting Marcus mouth at his neck. His kisses grow hungrier and more anxious, unsure of what is allowed and what is not allowed.

Tomas grips his undershirt tightly in one hand. “Go on,” he breathes. Marcus goes still in his arms. “Nobody can see you but He and I.”

Marcus hesitates for only a moment before he dips his tongue into the hollow of Tomas’ throat, tasting the bead of sweat that’s gathered there. He finds the places where the neck meets the shoulder and bites down, gently at first, and the effect is immediate. Tomas’ hips jerk involuntarily under his hands, and Marcus hears him groan. He nips smaller bites up the column of Tomas’ neck, giving him everything his groans of pleasure ask of him. He doesn’t tease Tomas, he doesn’t play games. He gives him all his attention immediately and without restraint, and Tomas digs his fingernails into Marcus’ shoulders and cries out in ecstasy.

He’s loud, almost too loud, and Marcus is enchanted by it. Tomas whimpers and grinds their erections together, pressing into Marcus as though trying to make love to him through their clothes. They let their hips rock together like that for a moment, just holding each other and enjoying the sensation.

The speed at which everything had escalated is dizzying. Marcus finds himself struggling to steady his breath. His hands clench in Tomas’ shirt as he wills his heartbeat to slow.

“I wish I could be a poet for you,” he says, his voice muffled in Tomas’ shoulder. “I would write you such letters.”

“I’ve seen your drawings of me,” Tomas confesses with a shaky laugh. “Those are better love letters than I have ever written. Me and my English.”

“Don’t you start. You’re better at English than I am. And the way you pronounce things, my God.”

“Like what?”

“Fuck, I don’t know . . . like _candelabra._ And _benediction.”_

“When you speak Spanish,” Tomas whispers in his ear, “it unmans me.”

Marcus shudders, and kisses Tomas again to quiet him.

After a while, Tomas eases him back down onto the mattress and begins to slip him out of his undershirt. When it finally comes off, Marcus hears Tomas’ breathing hitch. “You’ve seen me naked before,” he says hoarsely, suddenly overwhelmed.

“Yeah,” Tomas says, stumbling over his words as he tugs off his own shirt. “But not- but not like-”

“Not exactly factory fresh, is it,” Marcus mumbles, uncomfortably aware of his scars, and the way the moonlight makes them stand out white and puckered against his skin.

A pained look crosses Tomas’ face. He drops his shirt over the edge of the bed and leans down to run his hands over every inch of Marcus’ skin he can reach. His fingers burn like the hands of an angel; Marcus can feel them tracing the outline of his ribs. Tomas’ kisses against his chest make him tremble. In this moment, he realizes, he would give Tomas anything. The thought should terrify him, but it fails to do so. “Tomas,” he breathes, desperate to try to vocalize something of the storm inside him, but all that comes out is a name.

 _“Marcus,”_ Tomas moans back, and Marcus hears for the first time how wrecked Tomas’ voice is, how much thicker his accent has become. Tomas’ hand brushes against his belly, just above the waistline of his boxers. _“Mi león.”_

It’s close to too much, yet far from enough. Marcus guides Tomas’ hand lower, lets him cup him in his most private place, and when he does Tomas lunges forward and kisses him like he’s dying. Marcus’ hands jump up to hold Tomas’ face almost by instinct. When they part, Tomas’ pupils are blown wide with lust, but they are _his_ eyes, wine-dark and reflecting all the glory of heaven. He ought to be painted on the ceiling of a cathedral.

“Did you really look at my drawings?” Marcus asks, his voice weak.

“I did.”

“I want to fill my Bible with them. Your face belongs there, among the words of God.”

“Among the words of Solomon, you mean.”

And it’s those words of all things, spoken so fondly, that make Marcus’ flush crimson. “At least i’m not quoting him at you,” he says a little defensively.

 _“You are my private garden,”_ Tomas murmurs. _“My treasure, my bride, my secluded spring and hidden fountain. Your thighs shelter a paradise.”_

For a moment they stare at each other, faces red and eyes wide, and Marcus laughs because if he doesn’t he might cry. Even Tomas seems taken aback by what he’s said. Marcus can feel him grin when he buries his face against Marcus’ neck.

The both of them think, _my God, my God, let it be like this forever._

When Tomas kneels on the floor between Marcus’ legs, Marcus doesn’t stop him.

Tomas’ hands run up and down his thighs, as though he’s soothing some wild thing. He has a look of uncertain eagerness on his face as his hand settles on the waistband of Marcus’ boxers. “I have never done this before,” he says.

Marcus’ heart is in his throat. He finds he has no idea what to do with his hands, or how to position his legs. “Neither have I,” he says, and Tomas gives him a grateful look. Marcus sits up a little, letting Tomas work his boxers down off his hips. It is not the first time Tomas has seen his cock- their life on the road allows for little privacy- but it is the first time Marcus sees him see it. He watches Tomas’ tongue dart out to lick his trembling lips. When he begins to explore him with his hand, heat blooms in Marcus’ belly, and he lets out a strangled groan.

Tomas is murmuring something he can’t quite hear, something adoring in Spanish as he runs his thumb along the vein running up the underside of Marcus’ cock. Then Tomas nuzzles closer to _smell_ him, and Marcus buries his face in his hands. He can feel hot breath against the thick hair at the base of his cock.

“Tomas,” he whimpers, and then Tomas kisses him, sliding back his foreskin so he can touch his lips to the head of Marcus’ cock and it’s already too much, his orgasm is already rising up inside him. Marcus groans again and he knows he sounds obscene. To his own ear he sounds like a dog in pain, but Tomas seems to be pleased with him because he starts mouthing at his cock, wet and eager and inexperienced and God, oh God, _oh God . . ._

Tomas suckles at the tip like he’s trying to milk Marcus’ orgasm out of him and Marcus’ hips jerk, instinctively trying to thrust deeper. It has been far, far too long since he has touched himself. “Tomas,” he says urgently, and suddenly the thought of coming _with_ someone seems like the most backwards thing in the world. An orgasm was a solitary act, surely, something you did alone and behind closed doors.

Tomas only wraps his arms around Marcus’ waist and pulls him closer, taking him as deep as he can, and Marcus’ hands bury themselves in Tomas’ hair when he comes.

It’s sudden and violent and he comes hard, his seed too thick and too much, much too much. The seed of a man who hasn’t touched himself in a very long time. He hears a small, wet gurgle as Tomas struggles to swallow it all.

When he’s finished he lays his head against Marcus’ thigh, his eyes closed, his hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead. His breathing is more ragged even than Marcus’ as he struggles to get air in his lungs again.

All the pain and tension seems to drain out of Marcus all at once. He drops backward heavily onto the mattress, sapped of all energy, and fights the urge to fall asleep. The blankets are unbearably welcoming. Marcus is only dimly aware of Tomas’ tongue as he begins to tenderly lick him clean, mindful of the sensitivity of his softening cock. Marcus lets out a feeble, helpless whine when he feels Tomas dip his tongue beneath his foreskin.

“Come here,” he whispers, his hands still twitching against the bedspread. “Let me hold you. I need to hold you.”

The bed dips as Tomas climbs up and settles in next to him. Marcus lets Tomas nestle against his body as they press lazy kisses to each other’s cheeks. Marcus can barely think or speak, his mind an incoherent cacophony of _love, love, love._

Tomas kisses him at the corners of his eyes, and Marcus realizes with a sudden shock that he’s been crying. He feels the urge to hide his face, but it passes as quickly as it arrives, and he lets Tomas dry his eyes in silence.

Marcus helps him tug off his briefs and tremulously begins to stroke him, his hands unsure at first, then surer. This, at least, he knows how to do. “You’re so beautiful like this,” he whispers, his eyes fixed on Tomas’ cock even as he feels Tomas’ lips against his face. His cock is throbbing in his Marcus’ hand, precum dripping between his fingers. The weight of it in his palm makes Marcus' hands shake.

Tomas whimpers, and the sound would’ve been enough to get Marcus hard again if he were a younger man. _“Tus manos son ásperas,”_ he groans, his words too rambling and desperate for Marcus to make out. _"Si supieras que tan seguido pienso en tus manos . . .”_

“I love you,” Marcus tells him, stroking him faster now.

_“Necesito escuchar tu voz, dime la verdad . . .”_

“Anything, anything.”

“What would you do if the Devil took me?”

“I won’t let that happen,” Marcus says without hesitation. He pulls Tomas closer, tucks him against his chest in that special way that Tomas always does for him.

“That’s not what I asked,” Tomas says weakly, thrusting erratically into Marcus’ fist. He digs his fingers hard into the skin of Marcus’ waist.

“I would follow you into Hell,” Marcus whispers into his ear, “and I would bring you home.”

Tomas groans through clenched teeth and comes, spilling his seed on Marcus’ hand and belly. His body goes limp in Marcus’ arms, his head falling against Marcus’ sweat-slick shoulder.

They stay that way for a long moment, wrapped tightly together, breathing heavily. Marcus can feel his heart rate slowing, but the blissful sleepiness doesn’t go away.

Tomas shifts a little in his arms. “Was that good?” he asks hoarsely. “Was that a good first time?”

“God,” Marcus says softly. “Tomas, that was _brilliant._ ”

Tomas grins, exhausted but happy, and Marcus kisses him on the brow before pulling their blankets up again, shrouding them in warmth. “Are you sure we have nowhere to go . . ?” Tomas asks, his eyes already closing.

“Nowhere at all,” Marcus says, and they fall asleep like that, sticky and spent and happy.

Nightmares don’t trouble them that night.

*** 

Marcus has looked down the barrels of enough guns in his life to know that nothing lasts forever but God and the human soul. _If I were to cut out now,_ he often thinks in the aftermath, _and bugger off to my eternal reward before my time, then he’ll carry on without me, and do it better than I ever could._

For Marcus, who’s heart’s desire has always been, first and foremost, to be needed, it’s an ugly thought. It’s a thought that demons frequently spit back at him. There’s nothing he can do about it, save one thing. He can bloody well try not to die.

But he’s a scrapper and he always has been, a live-like-a-dog die-like-a-dog kind of man. It shows in his face. Particularly brutal nights will see the two of them crammed together in some unfamiliar bathroom, Marcus leaning on the sink while Tomas cleans his bloodied knuckles with a damp cloth and insists that he hold still.

It is not a good life, but it is the life they were born for. They fight like animals sometimes, and Marcus will say things that break Tomas’ heart, and Tomas will say things that make Marcus mad enough to see red, but they always forgive each other, and there is always a shoulder to lay one’s head against. They both know that the darkest days are yet to come, and they are both too grateful for each other to be angry for long.

It is not a good life, but at times it feels holy. There are mornings when they wake still feeling the contented afterglow of the night’s lovemaking, and when they drive east into the sunrise they can almost convince themselves that their futures shine like Heaven. There are evenings when they sit in the bed of their truck and bathe their upturned faces in the rain. They talk about days gone by, or the Bible, or the food they wish they were eating.

It is not a good life, but it is theirs. They move wherever the wind takes them, and it is always where they are needed. Two highway ghosts, with their chains and their Bibles. They carry on, Tomas pushing himself harder for Marcus, Marcus holding himself back for Tomas. “I don’t want to lose this,” Tomas says one night, when they are in bed together and the rain outside is brutally cold. “I don’t ever want to lose this.”

“You never will,” Marcus promises him. “You’re stuck with me. For _eternity._ If you think my soul won’t find your soul in Paradise, if only to complain that we’ve run out of eggs . . .”

It makes Tomas laugh, which is Marcus’ favorite sound in the world, and that’s the night that he stays up while Tomas sleeps, listening to the rain and the sound of Tomas’ breathing.

 _“Husband,”_ he whispers into the night. It sounds like a holy word in his mouth.

He feels Tomas shift a little in his sleep, and in a quiet, steady voice, Marcus begins to pray.


End file.
